


Trespasses

by wearitcounts (Sher_locked_up)



Series: Gratitude [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Emotional Infidelity, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oral Sex, Resolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:50:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sher_locked_up/pseuds/wearitcounts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary leaves the same day, bags in tow, and John can’t help but admire the quiet grace that restrains her from shouting at him, from shaming him, from condemning him. He knows, though. Her silence does not forgive him his trespasses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trespasses

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Przewinienie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2077422) by [Ciri666](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ciri666/pseuds/Ciri666)



John doesn’t mean to send the text message. At least, not quite so soon.

Mary leaves the same day, bags in tow, and John can’t help but admire the quiet grace that restrains her from shouting at him, from shaming him, from condemning him. He knows, though. Her silence does not forgive him his trespasses.

_My flat. Can you come?_

He almost adds, “if convenient.” Instead:

_Please come._

It’s close enough.

He’s grateful he won’t have to explain. With Sherlock, he never has to explain. Sherlock will walk in, coat swirling about him, verdigris eyes cataloguing every item, every artifact of what John thought his life was going to be, both present and missing, and he will know. What’s more, Sherlock won’t ask him to talk about it, or if he wants to talk about it, because Sherlock won’t want to talk about it. For that, John is grateful.

Though, and he should know by now, there’s always something.

In this case, it’s the unexpected strides Sherlock takes across the room upon hearing his own name on John’s lips, the way he crowds close and folds his arms across John’s back. Sherlock is bloody awkward at this comfort business, but he’s trying, and John takes a deep, shuddering breath before he lets his body go, before he gives in and collapses against Sherlock’s chest.

  

*

 

“Sherlock,” John whispers. His voice is a remnant of itself, shredded and torn, and Sherlock crosses the room, circling his arms around John in a way he hopes is reassuring. He can feel the moment John relaxes into him. He wraps one long-fingered hand around the back of John’s neck, tilts his head so his lips almost graze John’s ear. He doesn’t need to ask; he knows. It’s obvious. He asks all the same.

"Yes, John?"

“Sherlock,” John’s choking on his name now, forcing the syllables out of his throat and into his mouth, out of his mouth and against Sherlock’s clavicle. “I—I don’t know what I’m doing.” Sherlock presses tighter. John knows that he knows: obvious.

Sherlock closes his other arm around John’s shoulders. “It’s all right,” he murmurs, low and soothing, "you’re all right."

John cuts his sob in half with a sharp inhalation. Sherlock can feel John’s breath on him, hot and damp. He can smell John, too, his usual smell, clean and warm, but somehow a bit more ripe, cut open. “It was never,” he pauses, starts again. “I am a terrible person.”

Sherlock stays silent, allows John to collect himself.

“I love her. I do. But I could never—”

Another pause.

“You could never what, John?” Sherlock asks. His voice is so impossibly gentle he scarcely recognises the taste of it.

“I could never love her the way I love you.” John’s face is flush against Sherlock's neck now, his body shaking, heaving. Sherlock knows, they both know, it’s obvious; and yet, he’s unprepared for the enormity of it. The weight of John’s grief and of John’s love must be so immense, Sherlock thinks; too immense. How much of it belongs to him, to Mary? 

Sherlock strokes the spot where John’s hair ends and his neck begins. He presses a slow, sweet kiss to John's temple.

“John.”

John looks up for a moment, his eyes bright and wet, his cheeks stained with salt. Sherlock studies him. Pain, yes, but that’s to be expected. Grief as well; a loss is a loss, after all. Behind that, though, is another thing, a hard and cold thing, something Sherlock almost doesn’t recognise and, unexpectedly, pain blossoms in his chest as it registers: fear. John loves him, and John is afraid.

“John,” Sherlock repeats, somehow at once firmer and no less gently. “I—you must know, John.”

The lines of John's face furrow deeper. Sherlock closes his eyes.

“You don’t, do you? You must.” He exhales, opens them. “That I love you.”

A real sob escapes John’s mouth this time, a true, full one, and without thinking Sherlock captures it in his mouth, with his mouth, presses his full lips on and around John’s, doesn’t move, doesn't do anything but breathe John in, let John moan and press back against him. Then John’s mouth moves against his and the tip of John’s tongue swipes the plush of Sherlock’s bottom lip and Sherlock wants to be patient, he’s never been good at being patient, but this is John, his John, and John is kissing him and John is hurting and John loves him, and Sherlock groans into the space between John’s lips and clutches him tighter, strokes John’s tongue with his own, exhales against John’s mouth.

Then Sherlock pulls away, puts his hands on John’s arms to steady him. His eyes hold John’s.

“I’m okay,” John gasps, and pinches the bridge of his nose before dropping his hand to Sherlock’s hipbone, gripping it between thumb and fingers to steady himself. “I’m fine, Sherlock. It’s all fine.”

  

* 

 

John doesn’t remember Sherlock hailing a cab, doesn’t remember getting in; but somehow he’s in the back seat of one, bundled inside Sherlock’s greatcoat, pressed up against Sherlock’s side, feels Sherlock’s hot blood pulsing under hot skin through the utterly surmountable layer of sateen dress shirt as he wraps himself around Sherlock’s chest.

They pull up outside Baker Street and before John can think to count the once-familiar steps to the second floor, Sherlock’s pulling John's coat off his shoulders, pushing him toward the sofa, taking an extreme level of care that John doesn’t believe Sherlock is capable of, can’t believe Sherlock knows is necessary.

Then John is sitting and Sherlock is standing, looming over him, eyeing him cautiously.

“Please,” John all but whispers. “Please. Just come here. Please touch me.”

  

* 

 

 

It isn’t the way Sherlock pictured being intimate with John, for the first time, on the sofa in the living room of 221B, kisses that by all rights should have been sweet gone salty with regret. Regret for what, for whom? He can’t think of that now, can’t deduce it, not as he’s pulling apart the buttons on John’s shirt, pushing it off his shoulders, dropping his arms so John can pull down his sleeves. Not as he’s marking an open-mouthed path across John’s collarbone, smearing his lips, his tongue in the hollow of John’s neck, not as John whimpers and sighs into his hair. 

 If he’s honest with himself, he never quite pictured being intimate with John at all.

 It’s a puzzling thing, being given exactly what you want, and Sherlock wants to wrap his hands around it and examine it, rub his cheek against it, smell it, weigh it against the expectation that it inevitably must at once both exceed and fail to achieve; but he can’t think of that now, so he drags his tongue down the line of John’s abdomen, sinks to the floor, settles between John’s knees, and rubs his cheek against the front of John’s trousers instead.

 The sound John makes sets Sherlock’s insides on fire.

 John is hard and his eyes are an apology with edges blurred by lust. Sherlock covers John’s hands with his hands for a moment, pushes up and kisses him, just barely touches John’s lips with his lips and says “It’s all right, John.” He lowers himself again, moves one hand to undo John’s flies, pulls John out and presses a kiss to the tip of John’s cock. John shudders.

 Sherlock takes more of John in his mouth, as much as he can, swallows around him, pulls back again, licking all along the underside and sucking hard at the head. He uses his hand to retract the foreskin, tongues the slit, tastes the bitterness there that’s salt and skin and John. 

 “Sherlock,” John croaks and his voice breaks into a moan. “God, Sherlock.”

 Sherlock growls around John, then he lifts his head and curls both hands around the waist of John’s trousers and pants and pulls them down past his knees. He replaces his hand, his mouth, pushes his other hand between John’s legs, fondles John, strokes along the sensitive skin of his perineum, presses in with the pads of his first two fingers. 

 John is groaning now, the back of his head pushed against the sofa, and his hips snap forward in time with Sherlock’s ministrations. His fingers find Sherlock’s curls, twist into them and fasten there.  “Oh, Christ, Sherlock—oh, I’m close.”

 Sherlock rubs with his fingers just a bit harder as he swallows John down.

  

* 

 

 

John comes with a sound that starts as a cry and dissolves into nothing, moves into his body and makes his limbs tremble. He jerks forward and falls back, his face relaxes and he exhales.

Sherlock crawls back onto the couch. John’s still trembling, but only a bit, and Sherlock pulls him by his arms, settles John’s cheek against his bare chest, runs a soothing palm over John’s hair, and John lets out another long sigh that he'd kept caught in his chest, left beating against his ribs like an eclipse of moths.

“Sherlock,” John moves a hand down Sherlock’s flank, grazes his belt. “I want to—”

“Shh. Later,” Sherlock says, and he’s right. The bliss is still there, buzzing inside John’s skull, but so is the pain, and John can’t even sit upright, he’s so heavy with it. 

 John closes his eyes and breathes and it’s Sherlock in his nose and his mouth and behind his eyes and John grips him a little harder. Sherlock’s hand is still in his hair, not moving, just sitting large-palmed and warm against his scalp. 

 “Would it be all right then, if I stay?” The question settles on Sherlock’s stomach, and he starts at it; John can feel his body jerk minutely beneath him.

 “John,” Sherlock says, his voice steady and thick, “I’d much rather you never leave.”

**Author's Note:**

> [holmesandwatsonbbc](http://holmesandwatsonbbc.tumblr.com/) made the most gorgeous [cover art](http://holmesandwatsonbbc.tumblr.com/post/56002307938) for this fic. Thank you so much, lovely! Please take a look.
> 
> [holmesandwatsonbbc](http://holmesandwatsonbbc.tumblr.com/) made [more art](http://wearitcounts.tumblr.com/post/56252763501/fuck-your-permission-im-having-too-much-fun) for me! Spoiler, a bit, so check it out after you read.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Dom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2083809) by [Ciri666](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ciri666/pseuds/Ciri666)




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